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those that appeared after its speakers split from their closest Zoquean relatives and moved into a region dominated by ChontalMayans. We then assess the conditions which made such profound contact-driven change possible. The Ayapanec data come fromlinguistic fieldwork in Tabasco, Mexico carried out between 2004 and 2008.Laura K. Suttle (Princeton University) Session 34Adele E. Goldberg (Princeton University)Avoiding overgeneralization errors: entrenchment or preemptionThe present study was a novel verb production and judgment study aimed to tease apart the predictions of two mechanismsproposed to account for avoiding overgeneralization: Entrenchment and Statistical Preemption. Adults were taught a novel verb inone of three conditions, each using a different syntactic construction. Afterwards, all participants completed a production task inwhich the verb was elicited in the same semantic context. Critically, only one exposure condition matched the semantics of thiselicitation, the prerequisite for Preemption but not Entrenchment. Both production and judgment results patterned with thePreemption hypothesis.John Sylak-Glassman (University of California, Berkeley) Session 6Student Abstract Award WinnerThe phonetic properties of voiced stops descended from nasals in DitidahtFive genetically diverse languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America underwent an areally-diffused and crosslinguisticallyrare sound change in which nasal stops (e.g. /m, n/) denasalized to voiced oral stops (e.g. /b, d/). This studyexamines the phonetic results of that change for the first time based on new data from Ditidaht (Wakashan). The voiced stopsexhibit significant prevoicing and have the same duration as the contemporary nasal consonants (which can all be traced tocontact, baby talk, or sound symbolism). These characteristics may be phonetic relics of the historical nasals from which thecontemporary voiced stops descended.Rachel Szekely (Long Island University) Session 46I’m in, therefore I am: existentially dependent NPs and the semantics of locative prepositionsWords like "hole" behave differently than nouns denoting "ordinary" objects in the subject position of copular sentences (Kimball1973; Milsark 1974). For example (1) "There is a hole in my pants" but not (2) "#A hole is in my pants". (2) becomes acceptableif you substitute an “ordinary” noun, e.g. (3) "A coat is in my closet", or if the NP is definite: (4) "The hole is in my pants". Thisresearch provides a lexical-semantic explanation for these facts that encodes their EXISTENTIAL DEPENDENCY on a host entity, arelation which determines essential properties such as existence and (co-) location.Lajos Szoboszlai (University of California, Davis) Session 104Ownership and language change in Mutsun revivalThis paper explores language change at the relearning stage of revitalization in a case study of a Mutsun tribal member learninghis language. Language change in the absence of complete documentation is essential for language revitalization. Analyses ofpsychological and intellectual mechanisms driving language change during relearning under these circumstances remain scant inthe literature. I posit the sense of 'ownership' (Hill 2002, Neely & Palmer 2009) as a factor enabling language change through thelearning process. The Mutsun learner's sense of ownership is the driving force behind language change in Mutsun languagerevival.Khady Tamba (University of Kansas) Session 13Harold Torrence (University of Kansas)Factive relative clauses in WolofWe analyze two factive constructions in Wolof, a Senegalese Atlantic language with several noun classes. The Wolofconstructions have the form of relative clauses and we argue that they involve A-movement of two distinct null nominaloperators that trigger distinct noun class agreement on relative clause complementizers. A “verbal relative” can be interpreted aseither factive or manner (“way that”). The “li-relative” lacks the manner interpretation, which suggests that the constructionsinvolve two semantically distinct null nominal operators. The Wolof data provides cross-linguistic support for analyses that treatfactive clauses as involving operator movement.208